Dead Air

by Iain Banks

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Though I’ll want my pliers back, or a receipt.’ I smiled. ‘I’ll pay for a new mike cable.’

  Still not the clever bit.

  ‘Ken!’ Cavan came into the Green Room. The two guards were in there with me, and two of the awfullies. I was watching News 24 on the room’s TV and relaxing with a Scotch and soda. Not something I’d normally countenance, but, hey, it was only a blend, and besides, I felt a certain refreshing desire to get drunk quickly.

  ‘Cavan!’ I said.

  He looked a little flushed. There was a smile on his face that looked unhappy to be there. ‘Well, that was a bit of a surprise there, Ken. What was that all about?’

  ‘What was what?’ I asked.

  Cavan sat on the edge of the table with all the sandwiches and drink. ‘Bit of a rush to the head there, Ken?’

  ‘Cavan,’ I said. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  The door opened again and the exec producer came in; a small, bald, harassed, sullen-looking guy I’d met briefly earlier whose name I’d forgotten the instant I’d been told it. ‘Ken,’ he said throatily, ‘Ken; what, what, what was that…? I mean we just can’t allow, I mean, that was just, that was really just, I mean, what, what on earth-?’

  ‘Cavan, old son,’ I said.

  ‘… I mean, I mean…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘… You can’t, just can’t…’

  ‘Are you calling the police?’

  ‘… no respect, professionalism…’

  ‘Ah, the police?’

  ‘… ashamed of yourself, quite, I mean, I don’t…’

  ‘Yes; are you calling the police?’

  ‘… in my entire career…’

  ‘Eh? Ah, now…’

  ‘… disgrace, just a disgrace…’

  ‘Have you called the police? Do you intend to call the police?’

  ‘… what you could be thinking of…’

  ‘I’ve no idea, Ken. Your man here might know. Mike; we calling the police?’

  ‘What? I… Ah… I… I don’t know? Should we?’

  Mike looked at Cavan, who shrugged. He looked at me.

  ‘Guys,’ I laughed. ‘I can’t tell you!’ I returned my attention to the telly and said, ‘I think you should find out whether the feds are to be involved. Because, otherwise, I’m about to leave.’

  ‘Ah… leave?’ said Mike the exec producer.

  ‘Mm-hmm,’ I said, sipping my drink and watching shots of Camp X-Ray.

  ‘But, well… we thought we could, maybe, still do the discussion. I mean, if you would agree…’

  Cavan crossed his arms and appeared innocently bemused.

  I was looking at the two of them, shaking my head. ‘Listen, guys, I have no fucking intention of even beginning to take that nasty little right-wing shithead’s diseased ideas seriously, to debate them, for fuck’s sake.’ I looked back at the TV. ‘Never did,’ I muttered. I looked back at the producer. He was standing with his mouth open. I frowned. ‘You did get it all on tape, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Of course we did.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Very good.’ I watched the TV a moment longer. ‘So,’ I said to him, when he still hadn’t gone, ‘if you could just find out if the boys in blue are going to be involved or not. Okay? Thanks.’ I nodded at the door and then went back to watching the guys in orange shuffling between the cages in Guantanamo.

  He shook his head at me, and left. I smiled at the two attractive awfullies, who grinned back nervously.

  Cavan chuckled and got up to leave. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if I’m not mistaken, Ken, you’ve totally fucked us.’ He opened the door. ‘But it was elegantly done.’ He nodded as he left. ‘Look after yourself.’

  I just smiled at him.

  Actually, at that point I’d quite happily have settled for whacking a fascist and getting away with it, but – in theory, according to the mad, bad plan at least – what had to happen next was that somebody did take the matter further, and the cops did become involved, and I was formally charged with assault.

  Because then – despite all the witnesses, despite the cameras and the videotape and the thing being replayable in slow motion from two or three different angles, and certainly despite what I hoped would develop into a splendid black eye for Lawson Brierley – I had every intention, in front of the police, in front of the lawyers, in front of a judge and in front of a jury if it came to that, of denying it had ever happened.

  And that was the fucking clever bit.

  Nine. BIG GUNS

  ‘I knew you were up to something.’

  ‘Fuck off! You did not.’

  ‘I did! Why do you think I was so nervous earlier in the Pig?’

  ‘You’re always nervous when I’m doing something you can’t control.’

  Phil made a noise you could only call a gasp. ‘Now that’s not true, Ken. That’s unfair.’ He seemed genuinely hurt.

  I put a hand on his shoulder. It was still true, mind you, but I said, ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You didn’t really hit him, did you?’

  ‘Yup. Biffed the blighter on the phizog.’

  ‘A proper punch?’

  ‘A proper punch. Look at them bunch a fives.’ I held my right hand out to show him the grazes on the knuckles. My hand still hurt.

  ‘You’re really proud of this, aren’t you?’

  I thought about it. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  We were in the Bough. Phil had said he’d hang about Capital Live! until the recording for Breaking News was finished, expecting a debriefing; he’d been suitably surprised when I’d walked into the office barely ninety minutes after I’d left him for the studio in Clerkenwell.

  ‘You attacked him?’ Kayla had said, sitting back in her chair in her winter camos and chewing on a pen. I’d nodded, and she’d got up and kissed me. ‘Brilliant, Ken.’

  Phil and his assistant Andi had looked aghast at each other. Andi had said, ‘Pub, now, I’d suggest.’

  ‘But they didn’t call the police.’

  ‘Not so far. They spent most of their time trying to persuade me to stay and continue with the debate. I don’t know what put them off eventually, me stonewalling or the make-up girls running out of foundation to cover up Lawson’s black eye. Eventually I just walked out and got a taxi.’

  ‘Do you think Brierley will press charges?’

  ‘No idea.’ I drank my London Pride and smiled widely at Phil. ‘Don’t fucking care.’

  ‘You’ve been planning this for weeks, haven’t you?’

  ‘Months, actually. Since it was first brought up in Debbie’s office, back in September. I had that classic dilemma thing going where you don’t want to give these people a platform, but on the other hand you want to get them in public and grind the grisly fuckers into the dust – and I actually really thought I could do it, because I’m a fucking militant liberal, not the wishy-washy sort that would try to understand the bastard or just be appalled – but then I thought, na, just give the piece of shit a taste of his own medicine.’

  Phil was silent for a while, so I looked at him; he was sitting side-on, looking at me.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Maybe I don’t know you as well as I thought I did.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I grinned. ‘Good, eh?’

  ‘If he does press charges, though, you could be in serious trouble.’

  ‘First offence? No weapon involved? I don’t think I’ll be going to prison. I did have a doomsday scenario going on in my head about getting carried away once I got my hands on the fuck and beating him to a pulp, leaving him paralysed or dead or something or with a Telefunken UB47 rammed up his arse, but in the end it played out pretty well. I can stand a fine and being bound over to keep the peace, or whatever.’

  ‘I was thinking more about your job.’

  I glanced at him. ‘Yeah. In theory.’

  ‘Not just in theory.’

  ‘I thought I was pretty safe there. We haven’t had a dressing
down for, shit, weeks.’

  ‘Ken, for goodness’ sake; we exist on a knife-edge all the time whether or not we get a formal warning or even just a quiet word. I’ve had the ads department on to me about cancellations from American Airlines, the Israeli Tourist Board… and one or two others I’ve managed to repress, obviously. They’re hurting. There are few enough big campaigns going as it is at the moment; losing those that are on offer is giving them sleepless nights, and I’m pretty sure news of the pain is being passed up the corporate structure.’

  I frowned. ‘Well, maybe the Israeli Tourist Board will come back now I’ve beaten up a horrible Holocaust denier.’ I glanced at Phil.

  He wore a suitably sceptical expression. ‘Or maybe,’ he said, ‘this could be the bale of hay that breaks the camel’s back. I’d check your contract. Never mind vague stuff about bringing the station into disrepute, I’ll bet any criminal proceedings, even pending, threatened ones, means they can pull you off air without pay.’

  ‘Shit.’ I had a horrible feeling he was right. ‘I’d better phone my agent.’

  ‘So, Mr McNutt. Would you like to describe what happened in the studio of Winsome Productions, in Clerkenwell, London, on the afternoon of Monday the fourteenth of January, 2002, in your own words?’

  Oh shit, it was the same DS who’d interviewed me about the East End trip, when I’d broken the taxi’s windscreen and punched ‘Raine’ in the face. I’d had the choice of coming to my local nick to give a statement, and I’d stupidly taken it. The DS was a young white guy, sharp-faced but a little jowly, with brown hair starting to recede at the temples. He smiled. ‘In your own time, Mr McNutt.’ He patted the big, clunky wooden cassette recorder sitting on the desk in the interview room.

  I didn’t like the relish with which he pronounced my name. For about the five hundredth time in my life to date, I cursed my parents for not having changed their name by deed poll before I was born.

  ‘It never happened,’ I said.

  A pause. ‘What, the entire afternoon?’

  ‘No, whatever I’m being accused of,’ I said.

  ‘Assault, Mr McNutt.’

  ‘Yes; that. It didn’t happen. They made it all up.’ I was starting to sweat. This had seemed like such a great plan right up until I had to start following through with it.

  ‘They made it all up.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, what did happen, sir?’

  ‘I went along to do an interview, and it was cancelled.’

  ‘I see.’ The Detective Sergeant thought for a moment. He looked at his notes. ‘At what point was it cancelled?’

  ‘I never left the Green Room,’ I said, feeling suddenly inspired.

  ‘The what, sir?’

  ‘The Green Room, the hospitality suite; it’s where they put you before they need you in the studio.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I never left it. They came and told me the interview, the discussion, was being cancelled.’

  The DS looked at me through narrowed eyes. ‘You are aware, sir, that you will be asked to repeat what you’re saying, under oath, in court?’

  Oh shit. Perjury. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I’d been too busy congratulating myself on my own cleverness and blithely assuming that everybody would just play along once they saw what I was up to. I had thought this through a hundred times but somehow it always ended with me modestly accepting Man Of The Year awards, not being sent down for perjury.

  I gulped. ‘I may well choose to say nothing under oath.’

  Now the DS was looking at me as though I was simply mad.

  I cleared my throat. ‘I think I should talk to my lawyer before I say anything else.’

  ‘So I definitely get to be tried by a jury?’

  ‘If you insist, Mr Nott, yes. However I’d strongly advise that you take the option of going before a magistrates’ court instead.’ The lawyer was called Maggie Sefton. She worked for the criminal department of my own lawyer’s firm. She had deep brown skin and beautiful eyes behind the tiniest, most low-profile glasses I’d ever seen.

  ‘But I need to plead Not Guilty!’ I protested. ‘I’m trying to make a political point here! This could make the news, dammit. Won’t that mean it has to go to a higher court?’

  ‘Not really, no. And it is usually best to avoid going before a judge.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because magistrates can’t impose custodial sentences.’

  I frowned. Ms Sefton smiled the sympathetic, worldly-wise smile adults lay on children sometimes when the poor darlings just totally fail to understand the way things actually happen in the big bad world. ‘They can’t send you to jail, Kenneth. Whereas a High Court judge can.’

  ‘Shit,’ I said.

  I’d sent Amy some flowers at her office, but she sent them back. After our rather unsatisfactory bout of going through the motions on the Sunday night she’d said she’d call me, but she hadn’t, so after two days I’d headed for the nearest florist. I’d thought a dozen red roses would be just the right gesture for the sort of retro good-time semi-posh girl I’d had her characterised as – it certainly wasn’t something I’d normally do – but obviously I’d got it completely wrong.

  The dozen roses arrived back before I set off for work on the Thursday, three days after the Breaking News fracas. The note accompanying them said, ‘Ken; interesting but hardly worth commemorating. See you sometime. A.’

  ‘Bitch,’ I said to myself, even though I had to admit she was right. I took the wrapping off the flowers and threw them into the river. It was a flood tide, so as they drifted slowly upstream, sped on their way by a stiff north-easterly, I reflected ruefully that if I came back at the right/wrong time this afternoon, I could watch them all come sailing back down again. Come to think of it, a timely combination of tides and winds could conceivably keep their bedraggled, distributed sorriness within sight of the Temple Belle for days; even weeks.

  I shrugged, stuffed the wrapping paper into the bin and headed for the car park and the car Capital Live! had sent for me. The Landy was still in the garage; it had been fitted with its two new tyres – three, in fact, as the spare on the back door had been stabbed as well – but they hadn’t replaced its headlights yet.

  My phone went as soon as I turned it on, walking up the pontoon towards the car park.

  ‘Debbie; you’re up and running very early. How are you?’

  ‘Come straight to my office when you get in, all right?’

  I took a couple of steps. ‘I’m fine too, Debs. Thanks for asking.’

  ‘Just be there, okay?’

  ‘Ah, okay,’ I said. Oh-oh, I thought. ‘Why? What’s happening? ’

  ‘See you soon.’ She hung up.

  The Motorola vibrated again as I got to the Lexus waiting at the kerb. A Lexus; it had been a Mondeo yesterday. Good job something was looking up. I waved to the driver, who was reading the Telegraph. ‘Nott?’ I asked, unfolding the buzzing phone as he folded the paper. I thought it was best to ask; I’d once jumped into another houseboat dweller’s limo waiting to take them to Heathrow. ‘For Capital Live!’

  ‘That’s me, boss,’ the driver said.

  I got in, belted up and into the phone said, ‘Yes, Phil?’

  ‘The papers have got it.’

  ‘What?’ I asked as the car pulled smoothly away.

  ‘Lawson Brierley’s Institute for Fascist Studies, or whatever it’s called, released a press statement this morning. Basically saying they can see what you’re trying to do here, but… blah blah blah… the full majesty of English law, and common Anglo-Saxon justice, must take precedence over arrogant and theatrical pseudo-intellectual cosmopolitan political machinations. ’

  ‘You’re not paraphrasing there, I hope.’

  ‘No. We’ve just had the Mail on the phone. Followed by the Sun, followed by the Standard and then ITN, the Eye and the Guardian. I’m expecting to collect the rest of the set before the hour is out. Why is your land-line d
own?’

  ‘I pulled it out last night; some fucker rang about one in the morning and kept ringing but not leaving a message on the machine, plus their identity was withheld, so I got annoyed and wheeched it.’

  ‘Probably a journo favoured by Mr Brierley getting wind of it early. You weren’t door-stepped this morning, were you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You were lucky. You in the car?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Well, if you want to avoid questions at this end, have the driver take you down into the car park here and take the lift, okay?’

  ‘Yeah. Shit. Okay,’ I sighed. ‘Oh, fuck, here we go…’

  ‘Courage, mon brave.’

  ‘Yeah. Right.’

  ‘See you soon.’

  ‘Yeah, in Debbie’s office.’

  ‘Damn, she’s heard, has she?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘That’ll be who’s jamming my internal line here. Better talk to you when you get here; meet you down in the car park?’

  ‘See you there.’ I put the phone away.

  The driver looked at me in the mirror, but didn’t say anything.

  I sat and watched the traffic go past. Shit. What if they were going to fire me? I’d taken heart, bizarrely, from the profoundly noxious Nina’s remarks about publicity. I’d thought that no matter how messy everything got with the assault in the studio, at least it would be great publicity for me and the show and the station and that because of that everybody would be happy. Good grief, had I actually been insufficiently cynical? Maybe Amy was right. Maybe I was naïve. I thought back to the night in Soho during the summer with Ed and Craig, and me not dipping far enough down into the cess of human motivation with my imagination, being so innocent as to think that the worst reaction towards somebody who was helpless and vulnerable was indifference, not something worse.

  How personally and professionally embarrassing.

  I got lost in the traffic for a while, submerged in memories. A dispatch rider swept past on his panniered Bandit. Oh well, I thought, if I did get fired and I couldn’t get in anywhere else, I could always get a job being a bike courier again. Or maybe Ed would take me seriously if I said I finally really really wanted to be a proper club-type DJ. Fuck, yeah; the money was good, and just because I’d been dismissive about it in the past and gone along for the fun, drugs and women didn’t mean I couldn’t try to make a go of it as a career now. Boy George could do it; why couldn’t I?